Landa Digital Printing's investors have decided to stop funding the business, causing a cashflow crisis, and sending the company to the courts to seek protection.
Landa Digital Printing is asking the court for a stay on proceedings, to give it more time to seek new investors as it battles its cashflow crisis. A fortnight ago it laid off 100 of its 500 staff, and according to the Israeli tech press it has now just laid off half its remaining staff.
The company is in the crisis because its major shareholders have decided to stop financing the business, with immediate effect. It is now hoping to reach a deal with creditors, and find a new strategic partner.
Reports from Israel suggest that the company’s debts stand at US$516m (A$787m) with its asset value some A$600m short of that at around US$127m ($194m), excluding the value of its intellectual property. Israeli media says revenue in the first five months of this year monthly revenue at Landa Digital Printing averaged around the equivalent of A$5.4m, while operating costs were almost four times that level.
The company says customer caution, the ongoing war in Gaza, shipping issues, and “other commercial challenges” have caused a slowdown in sales projections.
Landa Digital Printing said, “Despite the company's significant achievements, the time it has taken to reach the full realisation of its business potential is longer than expected. The geopolitical situation, as a result of the long war in Israel and regional instability, as well as commercial reasons, have made it difficult for the company, and the shareholders who have financed the company throughout its years and they recently informed the company's management that they intend to stop financing the company immediately. As a result, the company has found itself in a cash flow crisis."
The Israeli press reports that Landa owes around US$413m (A$630m) to investors who are secured creditors. The major investor in the business is German billionaire Susanne Klatten, through her Altana business and her Skion investment vehicle. Landa also owes some US$88m (A$135m) to unsecured creditors, mainly suppliers, and A$11m to an Israeli bank.
Israeli media reports suggest that some US$1.3bn has been invested in Landa Digital Printing since its inception, with Benny Landa himself putting a significant part of that in, after he sold Indigo to HP for US$830m. Landa believed that nanographic combined the best of offset and digital, and would become the new standard printing process, superseding both of them. Just four years ago Landa was considering a US$2bn float on the Nasdaq.
The Landa nanographic press technology was launched at drupa 2012. Such was the showstopping power of Benny Landa's presentation that 400 printers from around the world lined up at the show to give him $10,000 deposit cheques for a place in the queue to buy one. Since then the Landa stand has been one of the focal points of drupa.
Big names from the local print industry including IVE, trade printers CMYKhub and Hero Print, and Vistaprint all signed orders during the 2012 or 2106 drupas, but they are still waiting for their presses. The first beta press was installed at an Israeli printer in 2017.
In June 2018 Landa secured an additional $300m in funding from Klatten, owner of the Altana Group, to which Landa sold its digital metallography business 18 months previously. Benny Landa now owns 54 per cent of Landa Digital Printing, with Klatten owning the remaining 46 per cent.
In the time between the launch of Landa's nanographic press launch in 2012 and today. the offset press manufacturers and the digital continuous feed and sheetfed press developers have significantly improved their technologies, all of them enabling high-quality short-run, or long-run work with minimal labour.
The nature of the new nanographic technology, which pushed the known boundaries of physics and chemistry in the commercial world, meant the gestation period for the presses took much longer than anticipated, and it is only in the last four years that the presses have been installed, although they remain unavailable in Australia or New Zealand. So far between 50 and 60 Landa nanographic presses have been put into printshops, in Europe, the US, and China.